Todo
“freedom to act”
Agency trumps intelligence.
Intelligence is just the ability to make models, it is a tool.
What matters is what you deploy this tool for.
That’s why agency tends to be more useful than intelligence.
Just making models for the sake of making models does not necessarily lead to success.
Agency is the control of the future.
Link to originalThe minimal agent is a controller of future states.
An agent can be something as simple as a thermostat which can control future trajectories, with the goal of keeping the room at a certain temperature. Its decisions affect future trajectories.
In order to be able to do that, it needs to model the world of how the world is going to change as a result of its actions (with different expectation horizons in a branching world, …), rather than just taking measurements. The efficiency of this process is its intelligence.
We end up with a system that seems to have preferences, knowledge, commitments, goal-directedness, …The more an agent is able to model its own actions as a causal factor in the world, the more self-aware (conscious) it becomes.
At this point, you start to edit your own source code, become self-authoring, change the way you interact, …
See also agent.
“Which action would maximize agency?” is often a good question to ask … not just personally, but for society / class consciousness / companies / …
Link to original2] Communism == maximum agency for the individual and society:
Link to originalIf we can ask the right questions, it is much more likely to find the meaning of human existence. As a heuristic in the search policy space, we should try to increase the diversity of people (or conscious beings) asking such questions. - Bliss Chapman
→ communism == maximal agency (“freedom to act”) for the individual, giving people control over their own lives and society.“From the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom”: Once socially necessary labor is handled collectively and shrinks through automation (realm of necessity), people gain time, resources, and conscious control over what they do with their lives (realm of freedom): research, art, building things, exploration, the conscious, creative, collective transformation of nature that capitalism cuts them off from.